CK213's Blog
:
September 2010
Loading screens
POSTED ON
09/24/10
I love loading screens. :thumbup:
Why?
Because they give me a much bigger world, more varied game play, more for my sim to do, more sims for my sims to meet, and a change of scenery. They are also disconnected from the time line. Which is actually a benefit. Sims lives are extremely compressed, so the more things added to the game means the less likely your sim can experience them. Priorities of other goals get in the way.
Although EA was a bit off in their do-once/ bored-ever-after treatment of World Adventures and difficulty of marrying foreign sims, I enjoy the change of pace when visiting China, Egypt, and France. My sim is free from the daily grind for a while and I get to do new things, get new experience, and get access to stuff that the home neighborhood doesn\'t have and probably wouldn\'t make sense for it to have.
Load screens in TS2 were indeed bad, because our playable worlds were small and the amount of places we wanted them to visit was large. You had to go through a lot of load screens just to have an interesting day in TS2. That is not the case with TS3. The point of the TS3 seamlessness is to eliminate load screen between lots within a neighborhood, not to avoid the need for connected neighborhoods. If you are visiting a connected neighborhood, you are going to be there for a while for a different experience you can\'t get in your base neighborhood. Once you get past the loading screen you are seamless again. You have an entire new world to explore.
This paranoia of loading screens is getting a bit myopic and short sighted. I think it will become more apparent as the EPs pile on and our sim\'s neighborhood becomes bloated with content and code and the lag sets in. New EP themes layered on top of the current neighborhood will be shallow compared to a connected neighborhood that is focused on the theme and allows you to explore it in depth.
If University ever comes around I certainly want a separate college town focused on the college life style instead of a rabbit hole university building and all the other things that will get in the way of me focusing on my college sims. University layered on top of a base neighborhood will be a shallow college experience vs one that has a dedicated neighborhood connected to the base neighborhood.
No load screens equals a smaller world, less varied and shallow game play, a smaller pool of sims to interact with, and by the end of 8 EPs, a very bloated neighborhood.
Why?
Because they give me a much bigger world, more varied game play, more for my sim to do, more sims for my sims to meet, and a change of scenery. They are also disconnected from the time line. Which is actually a benefit. Sims lives are extremely compressed, so the more things added to the game means the less likely your sim can experience them. Priorities of other goals get in the way.
Although EA was a bit off in their do-once/ bored-ever-after treatment of World Adventures and difficulty of marrying foreign sims, I enjoy the change of pace when visiting China, Egypt, and France. My sim is free from the daily grind for a while and I get to do new things, get new experience, and get access to stuff that the home neighborhood doesn\'t have and probably wouldn\'t make sense for it to have.
Load screens in TS2 were indeed bad, because our playable worlds were small and the amount of places we wanted them to visit was large. You had to go through a lot of load screens just to have an interesting day in TS2. That is not the case with TS3. The point of the TS3 seamlessness is to eliminate load screen between lots within a neighborhood, not to avoid the need for connected neighborhoods. If you are visiting a connected neighborhood, you are going to be there for a while for a different experience you can\'t get in your base neighborhood. Once you get past the loading screen you are seamless again. You have an entire new world to explore.
This paranoia of loading screens is getting a bit myopic and short sighted. I think it will become more apparent as the EPs pile on and our sim\'s neighborhood becomes bloated with content and code and the lag sets in. New EP themes layered on top of the current neighborhood will be shallow compared to a connected neighborhood that is focused on the theme and allows you to explore it in depth.
If University ever comes around I certainly want a separate college town focused on the college life style instead of a rabbit hole university building and all the other things that will get in the way of me focusing on my college sims. University layered on top of a base neighborhood will be a shallow college experience vs one that has a dedicated neighborhood connected to the base neighborhood.
No load screens equals a smaller world, less varied and shallow game play, a smaller pool of sims to interact with, and by the end of 8 EPs, a very bloated neighborhood.
